


This Land, Your Body

by denorios



Category: Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-11
Updated: 2010-07-11
Packaged: 2017-10-10 12:15:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/99637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/denorios/pseuds/denorios
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is just a little ficlet that wouldn't let me sleep until it was written, about Vin and the land he lives in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Land, Your Body

**Author's Note:**

> As always, thanks to the ever-wonderful farad.

No-one knows the land around Four Corners like Vin Tanner. He knows every rock, creek and gully for thirty miles, every windswept pine, every creosote bush. He knows where the deer come to water and where the rattlesnakes hide, where the wolves hunt and the bears hibernate. He knows the way the land furrows and rises to the west of town, the way the wind comes from the east and brings the scent of juniper and cypress. He knows exactly which vantage points give the best view and where a man can hide until he cannot be seen from the road until it's too late to reach for gun or cover.

He's had a lifetime of listening to the land, learning to understand the language the wind speaks. Some people have called it Indian magic, this knowledge of his, this ability to read signs in the ground, messages in the sky, have called it uncanny and savage. Vin knows it's only as simple as learning to keep eyes and ears open. The land is an open book to those who know how to read it, and this knowledge has kept him alive. If the only sacrifice was in learning to read the land instead of words on a page he considers it a fair bargain.

Vin knows Four Corners just as well, even though many of its residents would be surprised to discover that fact. He often creeps out of his wagon or Chris' room in the boarding house in the dead of night to stand in the street, eyes closed, just listening to the silence and the dark. He maps the sound in his mind, that base layer of stillness. He needs to know what nothing sounds like so he can identify the noises that shouldn't be there: the jingle of spurs, the creak of saddle leather, the rasp of a gun being cocked.

Chris follows him one night, stands watching him for ten minutes, barefoot and bare-chested. Vin knows he's there. He can always hear Chris, always feel him. He knows the sound of Chris' tread, the whisper of his breath and the scuff of his feet in the dirt. Vin could be lost in a crowd, people and horses and cattle, noise and turmoil swirling around him like dust, and he would always find Chris. Chris is the stillpoint around which everything else revolves.

When Vin opens his eyes and looks at him, Chris is silvered into something strange and beautiful by the moonlight and Vin can only stare. Chris smiles and holds out a hand, leads him back to the bed where Vin traces the map in his mind onto Chris' skin with lips and fingers, tongue tracing along trails his feet have walked. He memorizes the sounds Chris makes, the deep groans and whimpers and sighs, layering them into the palimpsest of noise that is Four Corners.

Vin loves this land. He's spent his entire life moving from place to place, never settling down or staying anywhere long enough to call it home. But he loves this land, because this land is Chris. There is enough of Chris' blood and bone sunk into this earth to make him a part of it, to tie him here for life, and if Chris is bound to the land then Vin is bound to Chris.

There is nowhere Vin can look that does not speak to him of Chris. The gentle roll of the hills west of Four Corners echoes the curve of Chris' back, the swell of his buttocks. The small streams and creeks are the tender blue veins in Chris' wrists. When he watches the wind moving in the trees he sees Chris' hair, tangling and snarling in the same breeze. When he presses his face into Chris' neck and inhales, he can smell dry grass, sagebrush, fresh rain. He could never be lost in this land because Chris will always lead him home.

He rides at night sometimes, trusting his senses and his horse to guide him safely through the sightless landscape. He comes to Chris in the dark, slipping into his cabin like a shadow, unnoticed and unheralded, and Chris only stirs when Vin begins to press soft kisses along the slender arch of his neck as it rests on the pillow. Chris scolds him for riding in the dark, images of rabbit holes and broken necks in his mind, but Vin just smiles. He trails his hands along Chris' spine, lips following, and tells him that this is all the map he needs, this right here, Chris' skin beneath his fingers, and when he spreads Chris open beneath him and presses into him Vin knows he's come home.


End file.
